[Commlist] New book: Gurus and Media: Sound, image, machine, text and the digital (UCL Press)

UCL Press is delighted to announce the publication of a new open access 
book that may be of interest to list subscribers: Gurus and Media: 
Sound, image, machine, text and the digital, edited by Jacob Copeman, 
Arkotong Longkumer, and Koonal Duggal. Download it free: 
https://bit.ly/48Q0OiI

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Gurus and Media
Sound, image, machine, text and the digital

Edited Jacob Copeman, Arkotong Longkumer, and Koonal Duggal. Free 
download: https://bit.ly/48Q0OiI
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Gurus and Media is the first book dedicated to media and mediation in 
domains of public guruship and devotion. Illuminating the mediatisation 
of guruship and the guru-isation of media, it bridges the gap between 
scholarship on gurus and the disciplines of media and visual culture 
studies. It investigates guru iconographies in and across various time 
periods and also the distinctive ways in which diverse gurus engage with 
and inhabit different forms of media: statuary, games, print 
publications, photographs, portraiture, films, machines, social media, 
bodies, words, graffiti, dolls, sound, verse, tombs and more.

The book’s interdisciplinary chapters advance, both conceptually and 
ethnographically, our understanding of the function of media in the 
dramatic production of guruship, and reflect on the corporate branding 
of gurus and on mediated guruship as a series of aesthetic traps for the 
captivation of devotees and others. They show how different media can 
further enliven the complex plurality of guruship, for instance in 
instantiating notions of ‘absent-present’ guruship and demonstrating the 
mutual mediation of gurus, caste and Hindutva.

Throughout, the book foregrounds contested visions of the guru in the 
development of devotional publics and pluriform guruship across time and 
space. Thinking through the guru’s many media entanglements in a single 
place, the book contributes new insights to the study of South Asian 
religions and to the study of mediation more broadly.

Free download: https://bit.ly/48Q0OiI
uclpress.co.uk | @uclpress

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